Interview of Courtney McNaught by her sister Lauren Wheatley

4/17/2019 Transcript

L: Where were you born and when?

C: I was born in Dallas Texas on April 8, 1984, but we moved to California shortly after.

L: Do you have a vivid memory or factor of your childhood that you can remember?

C: We lived in the grossest house, rats and spiders everywhere. Not to mention the rat poop everywhere. But we had a big backyard with a lot tall grass in it so I would spend most of my time out there either exploring by myself or with my little brother Alex. That’s probably a big part of why I love to be outside so much now­ I hate being stuck inside the house for too long.

L: What was it like being the oldest of five children, and did you notice in a change in your parents attitude or amount of attention towards you as they had more kids?

C: Growing up as the oldest of 5 kids I felt an added weight of responsibility from myself, wanting to be a good example for younger siblings and be a peacemaker and an added responsibility from my parents to babysit sometimes and help younger siblings with various things. There is also the weight of being the “first” to do everything. So my parents were always trying things out with me and were always unsure what they’re doing and make most of their mistakes with me. But even though my parents had very young children while I was in high school I always felt that they were there to support me every step of the way or if I ever needed anything. However, I do always get the benefit of having mom and dad around when they’re younger, and they will spend the most time and have the most energy with my kids because my kids are the oldest grandkids.

L: Where did you go to high school?

C: I went to the public school in my district, Los Altos High

L: Do you feel like you got a good education there? And what were your favorite classes and extracurriculars?

C: Yeah, I don’t really know how to measure how good my education was but I definitely felt prepared when I got to BYU, I didn’t feel behind or anything. I always loved my science classes especially and as for extracurriculars I did choir, which was mostly fun, and water polo.

L: So you went to Brigham Young University in Provo, did you always know you wanted to go there or were you looking at other schools as well?

C: I never really thought about this a lot before this question. I feel like I knew that my parents always wanted me to go there, since they both did, and they never really encouraged me to look at any other schools so I ended up only applying to BYU. Looking back I wish that I had because while I really liked BYU and had a great time there socially, it didn’t have a lot of options regarding what I would’ve liked to major in, such as marine biology.

L: Did your parents encourage you to be more focused on education and career or finding a husband and starting a family? Or both?

C: I don’t really think it was something that I really ever talked about with my parents but I think their mindset was always that yeah I should get a good education and be an informed person, but that a job or career didn’t really matter because I was just going to get married and have kids. Like that was just kind of a given to them and kind of what I thought as well for awhile.

L: What did you study in college and why did you choose to study that? Did it come from interests you had in high school?

C: I majored in biology which, I mean I always loved my science classes in high school and enjoyed biology and especially marine biology, loved the ocean and ocean life.

L: Did you feel that your major was more male dominated? And if so did that make you uncomfortable or feel out of place? Or did you feel as though you were treated differently as a female?

C: My major was most definitely male dominated. I feel like most of my classes were at least 60­70% male. It was actually one of the reasons I chose my major ­ which seems like a really weird choice to me now, but at the time I think I saw it as just another way to meet more guys. Guys that were smart and interested in some of the same things I was. I’m sure that there was some sexism and bias in the system at the time that I was just not aware of. I was honestly not aware of those types of issues at that time, and didn’t notice any differences in how I was treated vs my fellow male students, especially because it was such a big class and no one us really knew the professors so there weren’t I feel like too many opportunities for me to be treated differently since the professors didn’t know us personally.

L: If you could go back to your freshman year of college, what advice would you give yourself/would you do anything differently?

C: I would have a long sit down and talk about how I should be putting a lot more thought and effort into like what I actually want my career to be in the future. I think like I only had two options, either you are the kind of mom that goes to grad school and has a higher degree and you work all through your kids childhood and have them in daycare and whatever, or you just stay at home and don’t work. I didn’t really know that I could have a middle ground, and I feel like I would just talk to myself like “Do you really want to have kids right away? Oh, you don’t? Well, what the heck are you gonna do Courtney? When you are first married and before you have kids your husband is going to be in medical school, and what are you gonna do all day? Well, you think you want to be a teacher, well have you ever been a teacher before?”

L : You did not serve an LDS mission, what made you decide not to?

C : Yeah I’m not really sure this is kind of a weird question to me

L : Do you think it was just that at the time when you were deciding it just wasn’t as common for girls to go?

C : Yeah I think there are multiple factors, I feel like it was equally that I didn’t feel compelled to like you know I would think about it and pray about it and I never felt a really strong feeling that I really needed to go, or want. So that was definitely part of it and then the other part was that when I considered it, it was just way less of an emphasis on it, like girls were not expected to go at all, it was almost weird when they went, like if there was a girl in my freshmen hall that was like “oh yeah I really want to go on a mission” that was really abnormal, and I felt like I didn’t know any women who were close to me who had gone, like my own mom or other women that I knew and it was just right in the middle of your schooling, you know like I would have to leave after your junior year which was just really weird and awkward timing and then it was kind of like “oh returned sister missionary, yeah she’s old” ­ now looking back it’s ridiculous like they were only 22 or 23 but it was just totally sexist. Like for guys, it made them more responsible and more mature

L : It’s interesting though because I feel like when I am listening to people talk about their missions, the girls who I listen to, not that they appreciate their mission more but the guys just complain way more like “oh it was so hard and gross and my conditions were just so terrible and I had this stupid companion, like I’m glad I did it but I never want to go back to that” whereas the girls say more things like “I would go back in a heartbeat, it was the best time of my life and I was so blessed every day that I was out”

C : Yeah that’s true that’s a good point.

L : Anyways, onto the next subject, how did you and your husband meet?

C : Funny you should ask, just kidding it’s not that funny­ well it’s kind of funny. We like to say that we met at summer camp, science camp I mean because we did. We did the marine biology class that I mentioned earlier, at BYU together, although we didn’t know each other while we were taking the class but we met in Monterey (California) and we did the 6 week marine biology program together in Monterey in a small group of like 20 people and we got to know each other there and started dating after that

L: Oo la la. When did you get married and what was your married life like before you had your kids?

C: I got married when I was 22 and I thought I was really old, but I wasn’t and I thought I knew a lot but I didn’t

L : and I was 7!

C : Oh my gosh. Yeah, it’s hard to describe what it was like at first. It was very high and low, to give the cons first, it was very isolating because we moved across the country the day after we got married, we moved to the east coast from the west coast and I didn’t know anyone, I had nothing to do, my chosen major had gotten me nowhere, so I decided to try substitute teaching to see if I even wanted to be a teacher which is was I should’ve done years before. Brent was really busy, here and there he would have time off and it would be really fun but when he was busy it was a really hard time for me trying to figure out like “what am I even doing? Brent has all this purpose and direction in his life and I just have nothing to do” so then I started subbing but that wasn’t even every day and if I wasn’t working then I wasn’t really doing anything. So I made some friends but it took a while, I mean anytime you move somewhere new it takes a while to make new friends and feel established. Then I eventually decided to go back to school, and when I did that things got better because I felt like I had a purpose again, but yeah the first couple years until I decided to go back to school were rough

L : What did you go back to school for?

C : I started out in graphic design and for part of it I did a photography class and then decided that I actually wanted to do photography and not graphic design so then I did another year of photography classes. But then it was hard because we were really just on Brent’s schedule, which was always the plan and we had to do because it made sense, but then right when I was applying to the next class which would be my thesis class, where I would just spend the next semester working on my thesis project, was when we had to move to Seattle for Brent’s residency, and for my project I wanted to do it about kids and kind of a photojournalism project about kids because I babysat for tons of people where were living but the timing just worked out that we were leaving for Seattle, so I didn’t know any kids there and wasn’t going to be able to just get there and photograph random kids that I didn’t know. Part of me just wishes that I had finished but I knew that it would’ve been a struggle to just try to do it right away and rush and force it right when we were moving to a new place. Plus at this point we needed money too so I decided to start working so I never finished my masters­ I have half a masters!

L : So when you were dating or engaged, did Brent have an opinion on what you were studying or what were his thoughts about whether you would have a career or staying home with the kids. Like did he have an expectation that you would stay home with kids or have a out of the home job?

C : No he didn’t really have an opinion on like what I was studying, you know that was just my decision and he wasn’t going to be like “oh I think you should do this”. He’s the type of person who plans out everything and is always thinking about the future, like he had known that he wanted to be a doctor since he was in high school and had planned that out, so I think he probably assumed that I had done the same, he should never have assumed that but yeah he just thought it was my decision and it was fun cause we got to take some classes together and study together but no he didn’t have an opinion. I feel like we did at some point have conversations at some point about him having a job and me staying home with the kids, but it wasn’t really a discussion or anything to argue about it was really just a given, mostly because we had both been raised that way so we didn’t really question it, it just made sense. I think he feels kind of the same way as me that he could’ve encouraged me better and asked some of those same questions I was talking about asking myself, like in case something happened to him or if I just wanted to have something.

L : Interesting. So you did substitute teaching, and then I know that you worked in retail for a little bit, did you like having a job and the responsibility that came with that. And making money haha

C : Yeah I liked that a lot and it was a really nice change from what I had been doing, and I know that it was kind of a source of contention between me and brent while we were living in North Carolina we started to have a recurring argument that he felt that I wasn’t as invested in us as a family as I should’ve been, that I was more just like “oh I’ll do this for a while and then I will do photography and I’m not really concerned about making us a lot of money but I want to have fun” and that I was just doing whatever seemed fun at the time and not really invested in helping our family to have money and he was just amassing all this debt with medical school while I could have been working­ which I was a little bit I mean I was babysitting and subbing but I definitely could’ve been making more money than I was, so the debt that was stacking up was just starting to make him anxious. So it’s all very understandable in hindsight but at the time it just really affected me like “yeah why am I so worthless why don’t I get a job and make more money to help pay off the student debt” so that all kind of informed my decision once we got to Seattle to stop going to school and to get a real job. So I worked at J Crew and I really loved it and I had only been working there for a few months before they asked me to manage and I was kind of nervous about that because I just didn’t really feel like I knew what I was doing, but it was really good for me, for sure to have that experience of a leadership role and it was good for us both to be making money and feel like we had to money to go on little trips or go eat out together. And it was really good for me to have something where I felt busy when he was also busy, even though I could never stack up to how busy he was which became kind of a sticking point, like if something didn’t get done it was like, well he could always just be busier than I was which was kind of hard but it was so much better when we were both working a lot. Plus it was kind of an instant source of friends and a way to meet people in the city and it was fun to work on a team like that. (and I got lots of cute clothes!)

L: Do you enjoy staying at home with your kids?

C: Yes I do. And I don’t. Haha most days I enjoy it and they are getting to an age where it is really fun and I love to take them around and showing them the world. Exploring with them whether on a hike or in a museum, and helping them learn about new things is really fun to me. Some people really enjoy being physically at home with their kids which, that gives me anxiety like I cannot be at home too much, but I do love being with them and being able to teach them out in the world.

L: Did you have any fears going into motherhood?

C: Tons. Anyone who doesn’t has something else coming, oh man. Yeah I was definitely worried about teaching them what they need to learn and being a good mom. You know no one really teaches you how to be a mom, you have your own mom who you love but everyone has things about their parents that they are like “I am NEVER going to do that.” So you want to be the best of your parents but not have the same faults as them and you want to be a good mom but at the same time you have never been so tired in your life. And then there’s the physical side, like having the baby and breastfeeding which is scary as well.

L: How is your current relationship with your parents? Do you think that your family life with them influenced how you raise your family?

C: Definitely. I think it would be really hard not to have your own family influence how you raise your kids. And it comes up when we are deciding things and our reasoning will be like, “well that’s how my family did it”, and when we are talking about how many kids we want to have and Brent will be like “well I think 2 is good” and I’m like “doesn’t that seem boring like when the kids come home to visit and there is only 2 of them?” and brent will say “well that’s just because that’s what you know, you know that having a bigger family is fun but maybe having a smaller family is good in different ways.” And a lot of my parenting style is definitely informed by how I was raised. In regards to relationships, with my parents I have a pretty good relationship with them in that I am able to talk to them about things when I need advice about something, but they don’t try to tell me how to live my life, and we try to be supportive of them and help them, even when it’s something that I really don’t want to do or it’s really annoying, I just say yes and do it. I feel like that’s kind of how they have raised us too is that your family is where you should be the most helpful and spend your effort helping in whatever way you can, like how you can be there for someone when they need you.

L: As a mother, what are some of the most important things that you want to teach your kids? (not so much academically but about the world socially/culturally)

C: Definitely I feel like it’s important to teach them to be kind and thoughtful people and to be informed citizens about the world around them, which obviously starts in the home and I take those very seriously. I try to be a calm influence and not get too mad or upset about things but just try to explain which can be really hard. Especially before they are school aged and learning academically that’s the most important thing that you have to teach them­ how to navigate life and how to be nice to people and it’s really hard because kids come a certain way and you have to work with what you get. Sometimes they have tempers… like William.

L: Haha William does have a pretty short temper when it comes to a few certain things. Like Legos.

L: When you were growing up, who were some women you looked up to or who made you feel empowered as a women and why? Or just any women who you were like “They are awesome. I want to be like them”

C: I really don’t know. I mean I definitely had some church leaders that I thought were cool, like Sarah Riches comes to mind she just kind of seemed to have it all together but I wouldn’t really say that I looked up to her… It’s more of a truthful answer for me to not like try to come up with someone and to just say that I really was just bereft of strong female role models.

L: That sucks. Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so, why or what about you do you think makes you a feminist?

C: I am definitely a feminist. I’m not sure when that really switched over because I was always taught to believe that feminism was basically a dirty word and that it was a really extreme position. And what did I really have to refute that? I mean the internet was a baby and there was no social media. Even when I got to college there wasn’t a ton of access. And we never had discussions about feminism or women’s rights, we would never talk about that at home, and if anything like that did come up it would be like well that’s a crazy feminist she’s weird. It wasn’t anything that a good gospel abiding mormon would talk about or consider being. But I feel like maybe since moving to Seattle when I started to be more exposed to different viewpoints and moving back to California it was cemented that it was an important issue, that hasn’t even been resolved yet. But now it is definitely important to me and I definitely think about it all the time especially with my kids.

L: As the mother of a little girl, what do you think is important to show/teach her about the challenges/benefits of being a woman?

C: Haha that is the question. It’s so hard like I want Gwennie to believe that she can do anything she wants and to know that she is a person first and a woman or girl second almost? I mean obviously being a woman is an important part of who she is but that she shouldn’t be defined by it. No opportunities or challenges are off limits to her because she’s a girl, and she can like anything she wants to like, even that is hard. I mean people just assume like “oh here Gwennie here’s a doll, and here William here’s a lego” when really it’s like no, actually Gwennie really loves legos and building things. It’s just so hard to navigate because it starts so young.

L: As the mother of a little boy, what messages do you think are important to teach him about how to treat girls?

C: Yeah this is a really hard one too. I feel like with Willam, as far as like how to treat women or girls I haven’t really had to address it yet, right now it’s still mostly just teaching him how to treat everyone nicely and kindly. It’s just not something that is really on his radar yet, but in the future I will encourage him to know that women are just as valuable, important, and equal as men whether it’s in the home or in a relationship and definitely that NO MEANS NO, such a huge thing that is important for me to teach both of them.

L: Well good luck with that!

C: I’ll just send them to live with you for awhile when it’s time for that.

L: Perfect.

Interview of Judy Tackett by her Granddaughter Caroline Thompson

Where and when were you born?

May 10, 1944 Mobile Alabama

 

How long did you live in Mobile?

 

I don’t remember ever living there, but apparently we lived there until I was about 1 or 1 ½ or something like that so I’m not exactly sure. I do know that I was probably about 18 months old.

 

And after living in Mobile, y’all moved to Hattiesburg?

 

Yes.

 

What was your relationship with your siblings like?

 

My siblings? Well, okay Helen was the oldest and she’s 5 years older than me. Helen was always my big sister. I always looked up to her. She was beautiful. She was always like a second mother to me. I mean she was very motherly and still is. And even now she is like the mother because our mother is gone now. She’ll check up on us and has always been that way. I think she’s practically perfect. I call her my practically perfect sister. Buddy is two years older than me, and we had a very close relationship. I was the brother he never had. He made me a tomboy. I played with him. I ran races with him. We did a lot of things together. We didn’t have a lot of other children who lived near us except for my cousins when I was growing up. Actually until I was about 12 or 13. We had our cousins who lived down the street from us. We had my siblings.

 

How was your experience going to school?

 

I was extremely shy and quiet. I don’t think that I said a word the first year of school. They tried to get me to read in class, but I wouldn’t. I wasn’t the only one, but I was hesitant to speak up through 1st and 2nd grade even though I had the same teacher both years. It made a big

difference though.

 

What were some of your hobbies growing up? What are some now?

 

We just played outside. I don’t remember reading being a hobby at the time when I was real young, but I liked sports and I loved all sports. I learned to love poetry in the 5th grade. I had a teacher who loved poetry, so I learned to love it at that time. I guess the things I enjoyed doing the most was just playing with my siblings. We played in the woods. We played jungle and we played store. You know… things like that. We didn’t travel much. We didn’t do much of anything but I remember having good times at home, but it was always with my siblings and my two cousins.

 

What did you want to be when you grew up?

 

I wanted to either work with animals or be a nurse.

 

What were some of the most impactful things that you learned from your parents?

 

Well, most of the spiritual type things, I learned from my mother who was very very spiritual minded and always kept us in church. And from my father, what he really emphasized to us as kids was to live the way you’re taught, to always be on time, he taught me one time that you always leave early enough to go to work or to school or wherever you’re going so that you have time to change a flat tire and still get there on time. So you always have to leave early. You never walk into a meeting late, and momma didn’t drive a car. We always got rides to different activities and if we weren’t standing at the door ready to walk out when they got there. We weren’t supposed to go. Whatever you said you were going to do, you were expected to do. Do what you say.

 

What were some jobs that you had as a teenager or young adult?

 

First job I had was as a telephone operator in California, San Bernardino. I was 18 years old and had just gotten out of high school working as a telephone operator. The kind with all the wires like in the old movies. Yeah, that’s what I did. I was living with Helen helping out with David. And when I moved back home I began to work for a telephone company at home here in Hattiesburg. It wasn’t the same at all. It was very different. It was very old fashioned. They didn’t have all the modern equipment that they had in California, and I hated the people I worked with. They were all women but they used bad language. Daddy picked me up after work one day and I was crying. And he said, you’ll never go back there. If they are going to use that language, you don’t need to be around it. So I never went back. My next job, I worked at the Hattiesburg Clinic where I worked a couple of years before I got married. I worked as a bookkeeper and a telephone worker.

 

Did you ever work outside of the home after you got married?

 

Yes I did. I went to Georgia. Didn’t know a soul. I got a job right away at a chemical company in Macon. I worked there as a bookkeeper with a huge bookkeeping machine with a computer that was as big as a room. You know. It was not the pocket sized things that do everything now, but it was fascinating to me and I liked it. But I did not like the women that I worked around. They were back-biting, and talked about everybody. They were just not very nice. I worked there for, I don’t know, a year a year and a half. Then I decided to go back home and we were going to try to have a baby. The doctor said I was under too much stress and I just need to quit my job and go back home. So I did. But I still didn’t get pregnant. That’s when we adopted Tim, and I stayed home from then on.

 

What was a normal day for you while raising your kids?

 

Well, I would get up around 6 and get them dressed and off to school and I would sleep and clean and vacuum and mop and go to relief society. My kids are so spread apart that I always had little ones at home too. Tim was about 17 years old when I had Ben. I had a lot of them late.

 

What were some of your favorite things about raising your children?

 

We would take little trips down to the coast and go kite flying or go swimming. Our little vacations together were the happy times. Just going and being together and having fun all together.

 

What were some of the hardest parts about raising your children?

 

It was mainly during the time when Nelson was busy with tax returns. He would get up really early in the morning and get back really late at night. The kids would never see him because he left before they woke up and came back when they were already in bed. It was stressful to keep things going and to keep him going as well because during those 3 months when it was really really busy, I had to take care of him as well as dealing with all the kids’ teenage problems and what have you. It was hard to keep everybody going at one time.

 

How did your focus change as they began to leave home?

 

I started reading a lot more. Reading became my get away time. We started having our sister meetings where we would get together and go for a trip. Sometimes it would just be going shopping for a day. That was my time to relax and just enjoy being with my sisters. I always liked getting out and going to do something. And I liked reading. I read a lot of books.

 

Interview of Steffani by her son Coleman

C: How did your upbringing shape your view of yourself and what you could accomplish?

S: My parents always made me believe I was the best thing ever in the world and that I could do anything that I wanted to do. I had a lot of self-esteem growing up and my dad treated me really well and I knew what I could expect from men, treatment from boyfriends, people like that. My sister was a really strong-willed independent person and smart and so I felt that was valued in our home, for women to be smart and independent people. I was also taught that I was a child of God and that He loved me and there was a point and purpose to my life, and so because of that I knew I could do whatever I wanted to do.

C: Growing up in the 1980s, did you ever feel you and your sister were treated different than your brothers?

S: Not really. My mom would sometimes say, “Save the meat for the boys or save the big pieces for the growing boys.” It didn’t bother me that much but it drove Cynthia nuts. But besides that one thing, I felt all of us were encouraged to do lots of different things and explore different things. I tended to go towards more feminine things and my sister tended to go towards sports, and that was fine with everyone. My mom was a really independent thinker and a strong woman. She wasn’t a shrinking violet next to my dad, she did what she wanted to do. She was outspoken—not rude outspoken—but she said what was on her mind. So I didn’t grow up thinking that women should quiet and not take a full participatory role in the Church, the family, and in society.

C: How were attitudes towards women and their place in society different now than they were in the 1980s?

S: I don’t know, I had a lot of friends’ moms who worked, and nobody had any issues with it.

C: Do you feel that in our specific community, any of these women faced some sort of opposition for working and not staying home?

S: No. We were taught that a mother’s place is in the home and that her children should be her first priority, however she makes that work for her. My mom didn’t go to an office to work, but she had her own businesses her whole life. But I still felt like she had time for us and still came to support us. I also saw how stressed she was and that made me not want to work as a young mother.

C: How have your views about women’s equality changed throughout your life? Do you view some aspects of women’s equality differently than you may have back then?

S: I have never felt that I was taught that I was or was treated less than a man, from the Church, from my family, anything. I know other people have. As far as equal pay, equal opportunities, I see those differently now, because I didn’t really know those existed. I didn’t live in a place where people were complaining about it. Even now, in Ward councils, people are pushing to make women’s voices heard. I have never experienced that in my wards, that I needed to be quiet and that I should cede my time to a priesthood holder. I know other women have felt that way and that people are changing that, I have been lucky in that I haven’t experienced that personally.

C: How do you feel about the principle of women’s equality?

S: I think it is eternal. I think it is essential to understand that men and women are equal in every sense of the word.

C: What do you identify with in the women’s rights movement and what do you not identify with?

S: I identify with the desire to be respected and appreciated and listened to. I think that women should receive equal pay. I don’t identify with “career at all cost,” with the career being more important than family, and I don’t believe in choice with abortion, except with rape, incest, and life of the mother. I absolutely think women need to be respected and that they shouldn’t be portrayed as objects but as a mind and what they have to offer, like their gifts and their talents and strengths.

C: How do you define feminism?

S: I define feminism as the movement that believes that women are respectable and an important part of society, and that men and women should have an equal opportunity to participate.

C: By this definition, would you consider yourself a feminist?

S: By that definition, yes.

C: What would full equality in a business, home, and society look like?

S: In a business, it would look like everyone has the ability to progress, be listened to, have the opportunity to receive promotions, they’re paid the same way. And I feel that the employer needs to be sensitive to a man’s needs and a woman’s needs, and respect the needs of both genders as they relate to their families.

In a marriage, both partners respect and help each other in what they need to do. I noticed in Dad’s patriarchal blessing, it said, “You will be a support to your wife in all her endeavors,” and I loved that because I am someone who is involved in things, and I liked that the patriarch said he would be supportive of the things I was going to be involved in.

In society, women would feel and know their value, and men would recognize it, and women would also recognize men’s values. I feel sometimes feminists look down on masculinity and try to take it down. I feel that both genders need to respect each other. And that every person would grow up with a knowledge of their worth and their right to contribute to the world in whatever way they see fit, and that they wouldn’t be held back by their gender.

C: What progress needs to be made in order to achieve this ideal?

S: I think people need to respect each other, both genders, I think it goes both ways. I think people need to create families where respect and love and worth is taught.

C: Do you think feminism and religion are mutually exclusive concepts?

S: No I don’t, because I feel like the church helps women know their worth and how important they are, that we’re worthy of respect and leadership roles.

C: In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ The Family: A Proclamation to the World, it says that the woman’s primary role is in the home, but that husbands and wives should share the responsibility of raising their families equally. How do you feel about this?

S: I love it with all my soul. I think it’s fantastic. I think the home doesn’t mean dishwashing and cleaning bathrooms, it means a family and children.

C: Do you feel the gender roles laid out in the Proclamation reinforce gender roles in ways that are harmful?

S: No. I feel like a couple that doesn’t fit that mold can get inspiration for their own family, but I don’t think it’s harmful generally speaking.

C: Tell me your views on divine gifts of women and men.

S: I think women have the divine role to help God create a body, to create people. It’s pretty miraculous and incredible. That’s one role, I wouldn’t say that’s the only one. For mothers, that’s one of the most amazing ones. Women in general have the divine gift of acceptance and love. They have the gift to create peace and happiness and beauty wherever they go. And an awareness of others. Creating equality and fairness is also a gift. I think men and women both have the desire to help, but they help in different ways. I feel our gifts are very similar when we’re trying to be like Jesus Christ.

C: Do you think it shapes the way women view other women?

S: Yeah, I think people can make that mistake when we judge people for not fulfilling roles that we believe women or men should undertake. Especially when it comes to having kids.

C: Do you think the equality of husband and wife in the sharing of responsibilities is emphasized enough in church teachings (talks, lessons, etc.)?

S: It’s definitely gotten a lot better. I remember when I was first married in ’95, a lady got up in sacrament meeting—she was an older women–, and said, “You need to plan family home evening, make the treat, make the game. And when your husband comes home, turn it all over to him so your kids think he was the one that did it all. Isn’t that insane? I was honestly floored by that. I feel like in my generation, the equal roles of both partners were emphasized, but obviously the fact that this woman would say this showed that she had thought that way and things like that had been taught.

C: What are some challenges LDS women face?

S: I know that LDS women feel like that have to be perfect, that they have to raise perfect children and get them back to God—that’s huge pressure. Also just the fact that being home with kids and trying to keep your sanity while trying to get little people to become what they need to be, that’s really hard. The isolation it can bring into your life is hard. I think that other LDS women who don’t have kids also have that pressure of “why don’t you have children yet,” and for women who choose not to have kids, there’s also a lot of pressure, especially because that is what our role is defined as, and so if you can’t or don’t want to, where do you fit? It’s a challenge.

C: Did you ever experience some of those pressures not being able to have more than three kids?

S: Yeah, I found myself trying to justify myself to people, like “oh I had five miscarriages.” But I don’t think that’s the way it is now, but I did feel that way, especially in seminary. Everyone I knew had eight kids. And I think that has changed. In the priesthood handbook, they made an addition in the ‘90s that said the decision to have children and how many to have is between the wife and husband and God, not anyone else.

C: Abortion is a hot-button issue. Many feminists support it, even religious ones. How do you feel about abortion?

S: I think it is the most evil thing in the world. I guess having so many miscarriages, I have seen the baby from 12 weeks on, ones that I lost and ones that lived, so to me, it’s already a baby. To me, it’s murdering a baby, so I don’t see it as a choice anymore. I just feel like the choice to have sex was where the choice ends. It’s the result of having sex, so now it’s too late for you to have a choice, that’s the consequence of that.

C: Having had so many miscarriages, do you find the pro-Choice arguments perhaps a little offensive to you and your experience personally?

S: Like “I haven’t been able to have babies, how dare you kill one?” No, I guess it’s just I’ve seen it as a living thing. I’ve seen the little fingers and faces and heartbeats, so from that context, I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do. And there are times when the health of the mother is at risk, or when carrying the baby from rape or incest, I understand someone would make that choice. My doctor wasn’t even going to allow me to make that choice when I was bleeding really bad during one of my pregnancies, they would have just aborted the pregnancy to save my life. I ended up being find and Cy was born.

 

C: When I was growing up, I sort of got the message that mothers shouldn’t work, but should stay at home. Have your views changed at all regarding working mothers from when you were a young mother to now?

S: No. I just feel like there is a time and a season for working mothers, when it’s your choice. I know there are a lot of incredible mothers out there who do have to work, who are single mothers, whose husbands don’t make enough, who don’t have insurance through their husband’s employer, and they make it work. And I’m talking about young mothers. My personal opinion is between birth and age 10, if you can stay home and be there, I would do that. Working full time—if you don’t have to, I wouldn’t do that. I think part time is a different story.

C: I’ve heard you say “You can have it all, but just not all at once.” Tell me about that.

S: I just remember President Faust said that when I was a brand new mom, and I loved that idea because I wanted to a mother, and I wondered if I ever wanted to teach again, or do interior design, or whatever. And I just like the idea that there are seasons of your life where you dedicate the majority of your time to different things. When I was a young mom, I dedicated the majority of my time to you guys. And now I’m devoting that time to teaching. And I really do feel like I had it all. I got to be totally involved in your everyday life as you grew up, and I let go of that creative, or at least the English part of me for like seventeen years with you guys, and I don’t regret it one ounce. I wouldn’t have been as good of a teacher and I wouldn’t have been as good of a mom if I had done both at the same time.

C: If your kids didn’t want to have children, what would your advice to them be?

S: I would tell them that there is no greater joy and fulfillment in this life than having children. The whole purpose, experiences you have with your children are priceless, and that’s not something you can get when you’re fifty-five. It’s something at the end of your life where you might be like, “I wish I could have done that.”

C: What unique challenges do young working mothers face?

S: Woah… working mothers when children are young face all sorts of difficulties, feeling stretched all the time. I can’t imagine feeling like that. And trying to balance cooking, cleaning, kids, and carpools and working, that can be difficult.

C: What has been your experience working as a mother? Have you felt any societal pushback from your decision to go back to work?

S: None at all. I feel like everyone is so excited and supportive of me doing that.